A/N: I love love love The Scorpio Races and I wanted to do a sort of epilogue, even though I did like the way the book ended. The other language Sean speaks is Irish Gaelic, and any grammar mistakes are mine, as I used a translator. Sean is my own true love, and any bashing won't be done here. Happy reading, and please review.
Sean
It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.
For the first time in as many years that I can remember, there is no possibility that that someone will be me. I retired with Corr, a year ago today—because as much as I love the capaill uisce, none of them is Corr and without him my heart is not in the race.
I have learned to give my whole self to the uisce I'm riding, or none at all. Because holding back will only cause them to take and take, until there is nothing left of a man but a feebly beating heart and blood in the sand.
I will not race this year, despite the whispers and urges from the townsfolk and their ill-formed superstition that a Kendrick must ride. I will not race because the whole of my heart rests now on the high cliffs in the small cottage and paddock that look out over the beach, no longer on the sand below.
I will not race, and neither will Puck. I forbid it.
I saw the argument stirring in her eyes when I told her we would not, six months back. We have no need of the purse that comes with winning. Each of us carves out a decent living, Puck at Malvern's stables, and myself in the training of the horses of others, until I can afford my own. There is plenty of money, for once. Finn lives in the small flat above Palsson's and earns his wage baking bread. He passes the night in the littlest room in the cottage at least once a week, and when he leaves the house smells like freshly baked bread instead of its usual hay and salt and sea.
Puck has no practical reason to ride again, but the capaill uisce, once you let them in, do not leave so easily, and the call is stronger than blood to blood. Even though Puck has never completely lost her fear of the creatures that killed her parents, the call is strong. Six months ago, when I forbade her, there was a militant light in her eyes. Because we were married a bare week then, and the vow to obey rankled her, even though we'd left it out, and because the November sea was a remembered, coveted madness in her mind.
I'll not lose her to it.
The call doesn't touch her so strongly now, but there is another reason for that.
I stand on the cliffs, watching the barely restrained chaos on the beach, the wind biting, frigid fingers in my hair and on my cheeks. Corr stands beside me, bad leg slack and ears perked. He walks easily now, can even trot, but he limps terribly and he'll never carry me again. It strikes me sometimes, what he has given up for me, so that I am left gasping, my heart aching and heavy and my eyes burning. But he does not seem unhappy.
There is a reason for that too, I think, as Dove, in the paddock, makes a small grumbly noise and Corr's ears swivel towards her unerringly.
Inside the cottage there are multiple crashes and enough cursing to paint the air blue. I would be worried were this not Puck's usual morning routine. She is sleepy and sweet in the warmth of our bed, but when the first cold air hits her, she transforms into a demon, only calmed when she's had her tea.
Today's morning preparations are made worse by the fact that Gabe Connolly is coming in for a visit from the mainland. Puck is overjoyed to see her brother. She is not so pleased that she received the letter informing her of his arrival only yesterday.
Even as the clanging of pots and pans stops the door is banging open.
"Sean Kendrick," she shouts, "I'll not have you standing about catching nothing but cold while I'm half way to frazzled trying to clean the house for my goddamn sainted brother. Put on a fecking coat, or come inside."
I'm wearing my jacket, and am tempted to argue, but she sends a rubber boot winging past my ear when I turn and I think better of it. Corr dances nervously sideways at the close miss of the boot, and I roll my eyes at him as the door slams shut again.
Corr looks affronted at my easy dismissal of Puck's violence towards us, so I bow him ahead of me into the corral. He arches his neck and steps with all the arrogance of the prince he thinks he is.
He nips once at the collar of my jacket in forgiveness as I latch the gate, scoop up the discarded boot, then start up the path.
When I open the door, Puck is expounding, with a multitude of profanity, on the stupidity and general uselessness of the male species at large, particularly certain brothers and husbands. Her gingery hair is pulled into its usual tail, a few wispy curls escaping at the nape of her neck. She faces the sink, but I can tell by the straight line of her back that she is wearing the half irked, half exasperated expression, complete with the crease between her eyebrows and the single dimple winking to the left of the irritated set of her mouth.
I go to her, set my hands on her shoulders and my lips to the exposed skin of her neck.
She gives a cross harrumph, but leans into me. I smile against the softness of her skin.
"If you think you're forgiven—" I do something inventive with my lips, a tiny scrape of teeth, she moans, "—you're probably right." She turns in my arms so our faces are close, I skate my lips across her temple.
"But don't think that means you won't be scrubbing potatoes. I've got to take the bread out."
"I thought Finn was bringing bread," I say with trepidation, because Puck's baking skills are not quite to Palsson's high standards.
Puck slides, slippery as a fish, out of my grasp and pushes a potato into one of my hands and a brush into the other.
"And well he is, but with my luck he's like to eat it as a snack on the way here, so I made extra." I roll my eyes. "I saw that, Kendrick. Watch your step, or you'll be sleeping in the barn with your precious horses."
"They're yours as well," I remind her.
"Aye." There's a softer note in her voice when she speaks of them.
Puck moves over to the cantankerous oven, grabbing a pair of knitted potholders and pulling the door open. The surprisingly appealing smell of raisin bread wafts out, and I close my eyes for a moment, taking it in.
The peace is ruptured by three sounds almost simultaneously.
A horrible scream, raw and high and grating, sounds through the open window—whether man or animal I can't tell. It is closely followed by the muted crack of the bread pan falling to the floor.
But it is Puck's cry of pain that nearly stops my heart.
I am at her side before I have even thought of moving, slamming the oven door and kicking the ruined bread farther away.
She is slightly hunched, one hand clutched tightly to her chest, the other arm banded protectively around the slight swell of her belly that her bulky sweater can't quite hide.
My hands are all over her, not quite sure where to land.
"Where does it hurt, a ghrá, let me see," I'm babbling like an idiot, patting her all over and scarcely able to understand the words coming out of my mouth. "Tá brón orm, tá brón orm, feicfidh tú a bheith ceart go leor—"
"Sean." Her voice is steady, if a little hoarse. "Calm down. Calm down, it's only a burn."
"Okay," I gasp. I scoop her up, walking only two short steps to drop her gently into one of the kitchen chairs.
"Okay," I repeat, "I'm calm now. Let me see, Puck." My hands are still on her, gliding soothingly up and down her arms.
She tentatively offers me her small hand, curled into a loose fist. I open it tenderly, and hiss at the long stripe of angry red skin I find along the meat of her thumb, in the palm.
"See?" She laughs a little, close to tears. I think my panic has upset her more than anything, and she cries at the drop of a hat these days. "It's not so bad as all that. You're always making a fuss about nothing."
I shake my head, disgusted by my own lack of control and still jumpy with the remainder of my fear, and rise to retrieve the burn cream from the medicine cabinet.
"Here we go now," I soothe, rubbing the ointment lightly onto the burn. For some reason that I can't explain, I find myself growing angry, furious. At myself, at Puck, at the savage uisce on the beach who know no better and the humans who do, at Gabe Connolly for visiting and making Puck feel obligated to bake bread, which she knows she can't do.
I don't miss the way Puck's right hand strokes lightly, almost unconsciously, across her belly, and it only serves to stir the fear.
"The bread is ruined," she hiccups tearfully.
"Devil take the bread," I snap, slamming the lid on the burn cream and tossing it haphazardly into the cabinet. "You could've been seriously hurt, Puck, do you understand that? You and—" My throat squeezes painfully closed. She watches my eyes dart downward, away.
She snags my hand, tugs me down to my knees beside her.
"Don't be mad," she whispers. "I'm sorry."
I sigh until it seems there is no air left in the room.
"Kate," I say helplessly. She pulls me in until my ear rests against her heart, my body cradled against the new softness of hers. My arms rise of their own volition, circling loosely around her. I am still cold from the November wind, but she is warm and she smells of flour and sea salt. "I am sorry."
Her cheek presses against my hair, her breath stirring the wind-tousled dark of it.
"Oh, Sean," and I realize that she's close to laughing, changing emotions like the wind changes direction.
"There's nothing to be sorry for. This hasn't been the easiest year, not on either of us."
My head rises and falls with her breathing, the beat of her heart a comforting tattoo in my ear.
"Not the easiest," I repeat, "no."
I feel her smile, though I cannot see her face. "I wouldn't give it back, not for anything. I might change a few things, but," and I know she is thinking of Corr, just as I am.
"Sometimes I wonder if it was right, what we did. Letting him choose like that," I confess into the safety of her breast.
She strokes my hair. "You cannot force him back, Sean Kendrick. Between you and the sea, it is you he cannot live without. You should understand such a love."
"He's lost so much," I whisper, broken and wanting.
"Aye," she agrees, "But he's not lost you."
I am struck by incredible love for her, this girl, this woman. God knows I haven't the words, and when I do have them they are often the wrong ones. But Puck has enough for both of us, and if I have to spend the rest of my life making it up to her, I'll do it, and gladly.
I tighten my arms, and in doing so am made again aware that there is more of her than there used to be. I draw back, afraid I have damaged her somehow, afraid and ashamed of myself with it.
Puck is four and a bit months pregnant, and I am terrified.
My mother left when I was so young, and my father died just a few short years later, and even before they were not ideals of parenting.
I don't know how to be a—
"Sean." Puck's hands on my face bring me back to the present. "Stop thinking so hard. You're giving me a headache."
Before I can think of an excuse or pull away, I slide my hands around Puck's body, pushing up the heavy sweater until her abdomen is exposed.
She makes a small noise of protest at the touch of cool air, but when I place my palm against her belly she falls silent, hardly even daring to breathe. The slight curve feels strange under my hand, surprisingly hard, and I stroke my thumb back and forth softly.
My hand is dark next to her fair skin, tanned and calloused and scarred with the proof of my labors. They are a tribute to the capaill uisce, and the violence I have survived, and they do not belong next to the untouched white of Puck's skin.
I would pull away, but she stops me, lays a hand over mine.
"I'm not a soft man, Kate Kendrick. I don't know how to be, not even for you," I say quietly. She knows this, knew it before we were and every day since.
"I'm not asking you to be. The island doesn't tolerate soft." She pauses, stares out the open window with the look that makes me fear she will grow roots and sink straight into the hard Thisby soil. But her eyes return to me. They always do.
"I'm not, and I'll never, ask you to pretend something you're not. Only love me. Only love us." And her hand pushes mine, molds it firmly to the small round bump that is our child.
"I can't seem to help myself," I reply. It's the truth. Corr and Dove graze just outside. The cottage is warm and sturdy around us. The sea still calls my name, and the uisce scream on the beach, but I am no longer subject to their command. Puck Connolly Kendrick is beautiful and strong and fearless, she wears my ring, and she is round with my child.
I am so, so alive.
She smiles, the one that is only for me, then pushes me back. "Well, now that we've made a mess of the kitchen," she says, standing and wiping at her eyes. "Finn and Gabe should be here within the hour, and if one of them doesn't bring bread, I will throw a fit."
Still kneeling, I grab her hips, skim my nose under her rucked up sweater and press my lips to the peak of her belly, just for a second.
"Oh," she exhales.
I stand, without releasing her, and meet her parted lips with my own.
"I've got the potatoes," I mutter, adjusting her shirt, smoothing it into place. "Go take a break."
"But I—" I silence her with my mouth again.
"Go, Puck. I know well enough how to peel potatoes, and Dove was calling for you this morning." I give her a gentle shove towards the door. She accepts, hums in satisfaction, shoves her arms into her coat with an enthusiasm that worries me.
"And if I find you up on either of them, Kate, there'll be hell to pay."
There's a wicked glint in her eyes, and she slips out the door with a smile that promises she'll be holding me to my word.